


Be happy now

by StrawberryLane



Series: Seven minutes in heaven [17]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Acceptance, Age Difference, Established Relationship, Family Dinners, Family Fluff, Fluff, Hanging Out, M/M, Meet the Family, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 02:57:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrawberryLane/pseuds/StrawberryLane
Summary: “Do you mind if Bucky stops by?” asks Peter one afternoon, three weeks into his being grounded for being a lying liar who lies.





	Be happy now

“Do you mind if Bucky stops by?” asks Peter one afternoon, three weeks into his being grounded for being a lying liar who lies.

 

May pushes her glasses higher up on her nose and considers this. Does she mind that her nephew’s boyfriend stops by? No, not if that’s all he does. If he’s aiming to stay the night, however, he’s got another thing coming.

 

May Parker isn’t scared of some former WWII veteran and assassin. She’ll kick his ass if he tries anything. She informs Peter of as much.

 

“Thank you!” Peter yells, enveloping her into a hug.

 

*

 

If May changes into that one black dress she’s been told multiple times makes her look badass and also a little intimidating, so what? Spilling cranberry juice on her shirt was totally an accident. She’s just finishing smoothing down the fabric when the doorbell sounds through the apartment and she can hear Peter almost colliding with the wall in his hurry to get to the door.

 

She hears the muffled sounds of greetings and what sounds suspiciously like the smacking of lips. Which, okay, she did only specify no touching below the belt, but still. She’s been thinking Peter is too awkward to even manage to ask another teenager out on a date for years and here he is, in a seemingly steady relationship with a man who was born at the end of the first world war but still looks like he’s younger than her because he was frozen down for the better part of seventy years.

 

Sometimes May just wishes she could rewind time. Life was so much easier when Peter was ten and his biggest hero was Iron Man – admired from a safe distance and not up close.

 

May moves into the hall, coming face to face with the Winter Soldier. Or Bucky, as he insists she should call him. She thinks her use of “Mr Barnes” may be making him a little bit uncomfortable.

 

“Mr Barnes,” she says, mostly just because she thinks it’s funny when he squirms.

 

“Mrs Parker,” he replies, holding out yet another bouquet of flowers her way. During the three weeks Peter has been grounded so far, Bucky has visited a total of seven times. Every time he brings a different bouquet full of colorful flowers. Not that she will ever admit it, but May is starting to find it kind of endearing. And also, she’s starting to run out of things to put said bouquets in.

 

Thanking the man, she brings the flowers to her face to smell them, pretending she doesn’t see the shy smile her nephew shares with the older man.

 

“We’ll just be in here, okay?” says Peter, already dragging his boyfriend towards his bedroom.

 

May nods, moving into the kitchen to find something to put the flowers in. Maybe she has some long forgotten and ugly vase somewhere?

 

“Leave the door open and keep your hands where I can see them!” she shouts back, mostly because she likes teasing Peter and the way Bucky goes scarlet is kind of hilarious too. She knows, from previous visits, that Bucky will honor her request and keep his hands firmly to himself.

 

That alone makes her opinion of him a lot higher than it was before.

 

She can hear the couple settle down on Peter’s bed, Peter already whining about homework. Angling her body so that she can keep an eye on them from the kitchen – telling herself that she’s not being creepy, simply a worried parent – May pulls flour and sugar from the pantry.

 

“-didn’t even finish high school,” Bucky is complaining, apparently being roped into helping Peter with his homework.

 

“Yeah, I know,” Peter tells him, leaning down from the bed to get a book of the floor. “But all you have to do is ask me these study questions and tell me if I’ve got the wrong answer.”

 

Bucky mumbles something May can’t hear, but he takes the book from Peter, flipping through it.

 

May lets the sound of their voices turn into background noise, instead focusing on pulling up pinterest on her computer and getting to work.

 

*

Some may say baking Christmas cookies in November is too early but May isn’t one of them. If she had her way – and often she does – Christmas cookies should be an all year around staple. The kitchen always turn into a right mess, but it’s always worth it. She’s just putting the finishing touches on the cooled down cookies when Peter and Bucky emerge from Peter’s room.

 

“Hey, May. You want some help with dinner?”

 

For the past three weeks, Peter’s been helping out a lot. Sometimes even cooking dinner so that it’s ready for when she gets home from work. Maybe she should ground him more often so that he helps out at home instead of spending so much of his time “patrolling” the city, or whatever he calls it when he chases crime around without thinking of the consequences. She knows he’s been in more than a couple serious situations – more than once ending up in the hospital, claiming he’s fine – and it makes her worry. A lot.

 

“Sure,” she says, shrugging the worried feeling off of her shoulders. Peter’s here now, safe and sound. No need to worry about it now.

 

“I was thinking meatloaf and, like, mashed potatoes. Thoughts?”

 

Peter nods enthusiastically and Bucky nods too, but much more politely. Like he’s a guest and has decided he will keep his intense dislike of meatloaf to himself in case he offends the host.

 

“Good,” says May, feeling the beginning of a smile starting to show. “How about you start peeling the potatoes,” she suggests, nodding at Bucky.

 

He nods again, already rolling up his sleeves. May tries very hard not to let her eyes linger on the metal that is his left arm. It probably bothers him, she thinks, but she just can’t help it. It’s just so shiny.

 

Peter helps her clean up the mess the cookies left the kitchen in, while Bucky dumps enough potatoes to feed a small army into the sink, putting his hands beneath the water to start scrubbing.

 

He clearly knows his way around her kitchen May thinks as Bucky quickly finds a peeler without needing to ask. She tries to not let the thought bother her. She knows her nephew and the older man have been a couple for some time now – way longer than she’d like, anyway – and that Bucky’s been to their place before May invited him to dinner. He’s even slept over once of twice, though she thinks Peter definitely didn’t mean to tell her that.

 

Sometimes she’s very grateful for the way her nephew can’t lie for shit.

 

Soon enough, Peter’s elbows deep in a bowl of ground beef, mixing in all the wet ingredients you need to make meatloaf. “This looks disgusting,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

 

“But think of how good it’ll all be once it’s finished in the oven,” May tells him as Bucky gives a snort of laughter.

 

“Yeah,” Peter agrees. “But raw eggs still feel disgusting.”

 

*

 

They eat their dinner seated at the table. Peter and May are doing most of the talking, Bucky commenting on something or other when it catches his interest. At first, May figured it was because he was uncomfortable around her, his secret relationship with her nephew not putting him in the best light in her eyes, but she’s come to realize that maybe he’s just not everything the history books tells her. It still baffles her, how Peter managed to find himself a boyfriend that’s been featured in the history books. And how different he really seems from the image she painted for herself back in history class.

 

“Thanks for dinner,” he tells her seriously once both he and Peter has somehow managed to finish off every single bite. May looks at the plate that held the meatloaf. There’s not even a tiny morsel left.

 

“You’re welcome,” she tells him, earning herself a smile.

 

They end up eating Christmas cookies and watching a Christmas Carol on TV, which May thinks is a pretty good evening all around. Peter certainly seems to think so, if the way he’s grinning and cuddling up to Bucky is any indication. The cuddling can, of course, barely be called cuddling. It’s more of a “let’s sit really close and in each others space but keep our hands to ourselves because my aunt is right here.”

 

Watching them jump apart when she clears her throat is, quite honestly, hilarious.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you liked it!


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